File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

After making waves with a famous P2P paper in 2007, academics Felix Oberholzer …

Has file-sharing helped society? Looked at from the narrow perspective of existing record labels, the question must seem absurd; profits have dropped sharply in the years since tools like Napster first appeared. But a pair of well-known academics argue peer-to-peer file sharing has weakened copyright in the US... and managed to benefit all of us at the same time.

"Consumer welfare increased substantially due to new technology," write Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas. "Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society."

Weaker is stronger?

Peer-to-peer file-sharing on the Internet has certainly weakened copyright, but that's not necessarily a bad thing unless one equates "stronger copyright" with "better copyright." According to the US Constitution, copyright is about promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts"; it's not about enriching authors, except as a means of promoting said "Progress."

When we think about copyright, the most pertinent question to ask is not whether some change would produce less money for rightsholders, but whether some change would remove incentives to create. Has file-sharing reduced creators' incentives?

Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf presented a recent paper at a music business conference in Vienna that tried to answer this question empirically. By charting the production of new books, new music albums, and new feature films over the last decade, the authors tried to see whether creative output went up or down in correlation with file-sharing.

“Data on the supply of new works are consistent with our argument that file sharing did not discourage authors and publishers,” they write in their paper, “File-sharing and Copyright" (PDF).

"The publication of new books rose by 66 percent over the 2002-2007 period. Since 2000, the annual release of new music albums has more than doubled, and worldwide feature film production is up by more than 30 percent since 2003... In our reading of the evidence there is little to suggest that the new technology has discouraged artistic production. Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society.”

The authors don't claim (anymore) that file-sharing has no effect on industries like recorded music. Though both authors also collaborated on a now-famous paper from 2007 which argued that file-sharing had no appreciable impact on music sales, they are willing to concede now that it might be a small part of the industry's problems.

Indeed, they round up a host of studies from the past few years suggesting that, on average, one-fifth of declining music sales might be chalked up to piracy. (The rise of new entertainment options like video game has also hurt the business, and consumers finally stopped "re-buying" old albums on CD by the mid-2000s.)

But looking at such declines provides only a narrow view. Looked at more broadly, the music industry "has grown considerably" in the last few years. When concert revenue is added to recorded music revenue, the authors note that the overall industry grew more than 5 percent between 1997 and 2007.

Koleman Strumpf

That's in large part because consumers' willingness to pay for "complements" like concerts and merchandise goes up as the price of music and movies falls, and because consumers are exposed to many more artists when prices are low or nonexistent.

Even if the music industry was shrinking, though, the authors point out that creativity has not declined—which suggests that weaker copyright can still promote the "Progress" sought by the Founders.

“We do not yet have a full understanding of the mechanisms by which file-sharing may have altered the incentives to produce entertainment,” conclude the authors. “However, in the industry with the largest purported impact—music—consumer access to recordings has vastly improved since the advent of file-sharing. Since 2000, the number of recordings produced has more than doubled. In our view, this makes it difficult to argue that weaker copyright protection has had a negative impact on artists' incentives to be creative.”

Unconvinced

The music industry doesn't buy the argument. According to international trade group IFPI, "Live performance earnings are generally more to the benefit of veteran, established acts, while it is the younger developing acts, without lucrative live careers, who do not have the chance to develop their reputation through recorded music sales." Thus, recorded music sales remain important.

And IFPI's 2010 "Digital Music Report" (PDF) makes the case that artists are producing less in states with high piracy rates. "In France, there has been a striking fall in the number of local repertoire albums released in recent years," says the report. "In the first half of 2009, 107 French-repertoire albums were released, 60 per cent down on the 271 in the same period of 2003." (This number appears to involve only major labels, however, and cheap digital tools mean that much of the music production today is done without a major label.)

Even Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf admit that their findings aren't clear. It could be that, thanks to all these cheap digital tools, even more recordings would have been produced in the US were it not for file-sharing. But when the same trend holds true among book publishers, filmmakers, and musicians—the 2000s were about ever-increasing content—perhaps P2P isn't "disincentivizing" anyone at all.

And if it's not, the entire paper asks by implication, why don't politicians even consider weakening US copyright law?

125 Reader Comments

I always wonder just how much effect file sharing and the like have on the market as a whole, from data storage devices to store the data, faster internet connections to get the data faster, faster computers to play and transcode all that data, etc.

while it is the younger developing acts, without lucrative live careers, who do not have the chance to develop their reputation through recorded music sales.

Wouldn't it be easier to "develop their reputation" through free distribution of their music?

You beat me to it! Was just going to say the same thing. How could this recording executive not see the illogic of that argument?

Look at someone like Jonathan Colton: release your music free to the world, get a following, quit your job and go touring and be successful. This is how it should work.

I'm not arguing that copyright infringement is right, just that artists and media owners should be a little more open, and that it will benefit them in the end. Okay, maybe the whole pie will be smaller, but the need to create will always be with us, and people will find a way to be compensated for it.

The drive and desire to become famous works amazingly well with the concepts of live performance, promotion, and endorsement. With those avenues still open and immune to unauthorized consumption (sounds really petty when you put it in those terms, huh?) there isn't a net financial downside to allowing pop culture to be imposed upon society free of charge. Culturally, it's far more insidious.

(no pro-copyright agenda here... just snide comments about pop culture being a misnomer)

[blockquote](This number appears to involve only major labels, however, and cheap digital tools mean that much of the music production today is done without a major label.)[/blockquote]This, I think, is the key point the big labels are missing. Many artists these days don't need the labels - they have ways to promote and share their art themselves.

The argument that money is an incentive for artists to create art is quite silly in my mind. One only has to browse sites such Flickr, DeviantArt etc. to see this.

I don't think that there's any question that monetary gain is one of many incentives for artists. Focusing only on the monetary aspects of copyright, and only on the economic benefits to copyright holders, in copyright law gives us a very skewed picture of creativity, IMO.

I've been toying with an idea about how illegal file sharing and piracy affects musicians.

I have no doubt that your heavily commercialised, manufactured bands are being punished. Johnny downloads whatever the flavour of the month is and listens to it for two mon ths until the next hit gets released.

Smaller less publicised groups definitely benefit from the free marketing and the wider audience that are exposed to their music.

You have winners and losers and the losers just so happen to be the bigger labels with their hands in the pockets of congress.

(This number appears to involve only major labels, however, and cheap digital tools mean that much of the music production today is done without a major label.)

This, I think, is the key point the big labels are missing. Many artists these days don't need the labels - they have ways to promote and share their art themselves.

The argument that money is an incentive for artists to create art is quite silly in my mind. One only has to browse sites such Flickr, DeviantArt etc. to see this.

Yes, but is it wrong to expect that an artist can make his living creating art? Or do we expect the "starving artist" to create for us without receiving anything in return but the satisfaction of a job well done?

Jonathan Coulton's been mentioned as an example of someone who has "made it" using non-traditional business models. tommertron is incorrect: his music isn't "free to the world" in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, it's just not locked down with DRM. (He admits himself that this does essentially make it free for those who don't wish to pay for it - he's just not setting an arbitrary barrier between pirates and legitimate listeners.) He's also free to set his own prices (example: $50 for his entire library of work).

Coulton admits it's an experiment - I believe it's working so far because his audience is a group of people who's already highly receptive to this model. The more mainstream artists might not be able to survive under this model... yet. (Good, you say? I might be inclined to agree with you.) People like Coulton are paving the way for the next generation's musicians to thrive, but I don't think it's fair to expect them all to jump ship and join him right now... In the near future, when people can't remember a time before music was sold on iTMS, then I think you'll start to see a majority of artists distributing content in this fashion.

while it is the younger developing acts, without lucrative live careers, who do not have the chance to develop their reputation through recorded music sales.

Wouldn't it be easier to "develop their reputation" through free distribution of their music?

That would make the music labels obsolete.

The music labels are obsolete. The problem is that they intend to leave a whole bunch of really bad legislation before they finally give up the ghost.

Case in point: DMCA. They spend 10s of millions of dollars on lawyers to get settlements for 100s of millions from people who barely have $100,000 on the theory that this will frighten people into buying more records. Did it work? No. I may not know much about business, but spending 10s of millions of dollars for no increase in sales is just plain dumb.

Legislation that has no affect on society is useless but it's going to take at least 50 years before the courts get around to ignoring it.

Yes, but is it wrong to expect that an artist can make his living creating art? Or do we expect the "starving artist" to create for us without receiving anything in return but the satisfaction of a job well done?

I don't think anyone, except maybe the true crackpots & trolls, argues against the concept of an artist being paid for their work. The vast majority of the vitriol spewed in these forums is typically aimed at the RIAA/MPAA-style conglomerates.

Personally, I'm all for the artists getting paid. What I'm not for is propping up the bureaucracy of accountants, agents, CEO's, lobbyists, etc. that make their living off selling what the musician (for example) creates.

The argument that money is an incentive for artists to create art is quite silly in my mind. One only has to browse sites such Flickr, DeviantArt etc. to see this.

Yes, but is it wrong to expect that an artist can make his living creating art? Or do we expect the "starving artist" to create for us without receiving anything in return but the satisfaction of a job well done?

Certainly not; artists should be able to profit from their works. Money may not be the only incentive to create art, but it is certainly an incentive. The issue is that copyright is supposed to encourage the progress of the arts, and yet the law has moved in only one direction; stronger. Copyright terms have been extended (and extended, and extended), enforcement has been made more strict, penalties have been increased, etc. Do we know for sure that this is promoting progress? No, how could we? We have nothing to compare it to, since we've never seen copyright law weakened, terms shortened, etc.

If an artist has no means to profit from his work, as would be the case without any copyright protections, then one of his incentives to create is removed. But if he can create once and then profit from that work until the end of his lifetime, again an incentive to create new work is removed. The belief of many here on Ars, including myself, is that balanced copyright is the answer, not stronger copyright.

By Thomas Sydnor -- I just published a new paper called Punk'd: GAO Celebrates the "Positive Economic Effects" of Counterfeiting and Other Criminal Racketeering. <http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/pops/2010/pop17.10-Punk%27d_GAO.pdf> It debunks efforts to claim that a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reasonably concluded that counterfeiting and piracy have important "positive economic effects" and that all copyright-industry estimates of piracy's economic costs are "bogus," "baseless" and "false."

Jonathan Coulton's been mentioned as an example of someone who has "made it" using non-traditional business models. tommertron is incorrect: his music isn't "free to the world" in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, it's just not locked down with DRM. (He admits himself that this does essentially make it free for those who don't wish to pay for it - he's just not setting an arbitrary barrier between pirates and legitimate listeners.) He's also free to set his own prices (example: $50 for his entire library of work).

Actually, his earlier work (ie, before he "made it") was all released under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license, which made it not only free to redistribute, but also placed no restrictions on performance or reuse (in derivative works, etc), provided you credited him and weren't making money from it.

This was one of the main reasons why he became better-known - because he freely let people use his songs on stuff like youtube videos and the like, while the required attribution made sure that his name was visible.

By Thomas Sydnor -- I just published a new paper called Punk'd: GAO Celebrates the "Positive Economic Effects" of Counterfeiting and Other Criminal Racketeering. <http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/pops/2010/pop17.10-Punk%27d_GAO.pdf> It debunks efforts to claim that a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reasonably concluded that counterfeiting and piracy have important "positive economic effects" and that all copyright-industry estimates of piracy's economic costs are "bogus," "baseless" and "false."

You've given me no reason to read the papers you've linked, and your posting style makes me wonder if I should be reporting this post as spam rather than requesting that you give us some explanation and/or discussion. How about, instead of spamming us with an advertisement for your favorite publications, presenting us with something of substance, say an argument including a quotation or two and a link to the articles for those who want to read more?

...profits have dropped sharply in the years since tools like Napster first appeared.

I would say that it wasn't piracy that caused that drop but just bad music. Personally, I haven't bought a CD in years because the acts out there sound the same, come off as artificial, sound fake, over modulated, and I could keep going. Also, another big reason is the fact that they dynamically compress the hell out of music nowadays and jack up the loudness so it sounds horrible, distorts, or lacks dynamic range.

Quote:

Quote:while it is the younger developing acts, without lucrative live careers, who do not have the chance to develop their reputation through recorded music sales.

Wouldn't it be easier to "develop their reputation" through free distribution of their music?

+1

The trash that is being released today is gone in 2-4 months down the road until the next hit. The radio stations play it constantly during that time, sometimes several times in a hour. I always tell my wife, when she makes derogatory remarks on my music, classic rock+metal, that it is funny that the bands I listen to are still doing concerts and making music after 30 years or more of being around. Just goes to show the real stuff will always make money while the fake trash comes and goes.

C'mon, Ars. Don't fall into the lame news media habit of just reporting what both sides say as a means of being "fair".

When you quote the recording industry with this: "The music industry doesn't buy the argument. According to international trade group IFPI, "Live performance earnings are generally more to the benefit of veteran, established acts, while it is the younger developing acts, without lucrative live careers, who do not have the chance to develop their reputation through recorded music sales." Thus, recorded music sales remain important." you shouldn't follow up with "Thus, recorded music sales remain important". That implies that you agree with their unfounded assertion. It's fine to quote their lame sound bite, but a better following sentence would be "However, IFPI provided no data to support the idea that performance revenue disproportionately benefits veteran acts" or "though the IFPI gives no justification for why recorded music sales would develop a new artist's reputation better than free recorded music."

Obviously the Ars readership is smart enough to figure this stuff out for themselves, but I want reasoned critique of both sides from my news, not just a he said she said retelling of sound bites. (the paper's authors could use some criticism too, for that matter)

Before I go into this, I will state that I think that there are plenty of reasons to weaken copyrights, and I agree wholeheartedly that copyright is about protecting the ability for people to access and use the content made. "Art" has no benefit to society in a vacuum, it exists to entertain, to enlighten, to be consumed, and copyright SHOULD be about ensuring that our societies as a whole have access to it.

The problem is a lot more complex than the study would lead people to believe. Stating that "more music is being made" is not compelling proof that infringement is doing the right thing. Quantity != quality, and I personally think that over-saturation is part of the problem in the marketplace. Endless sequels, B movies and straight-to-DVD flicks all would be counted in the argument that more content is being produced. At the same time however, if studios are simply shotgunning ideas rather than focusing on making good content, is that the same thing as improving the offerings for society?

Secondly, there are plenty of gaping holes in the logic. One is brought up directly in the article-- the impossibility of knowing how things would have turned out otherwise leaves a pretty big gap in the logic. It's possible that without infringement, we would have just as much content (or more), but at a higher quality. Also there is the fact that there are a number of factors that play into how much content gets produced: the cost to produce content, the strategy of the companies affecting the decisions of independent labels, and the increased amount of money being invested into movies are all factors. One could also argue that as Hollywood budgets and paychecks have increased (which also occurred over the same time period), the incentive to get into business in the recording/movie/television industry has also grown, leading to a larger pool of people eager to get into the business, driving the amount of content produced.

That's the trouble with studies like this: they take an intricate problem that likely has multiple things affecting the outcome, and seeks to derive a conclusion while focusing entirely on the part of the argument that best suits their goals. This isn't scientific, and is about as relevant to the discussion as the studies which the content producers used to show the damages caused by pirates. It may mention that there are other factors, but the paper is written to convince you that despite those dozen of other factors/possibilities, theirs is the right conclusion.

I fear that this paper will quickly be used as "evidence" in any discussion of piracy on Ars from here on out, and in that respect, this kind of paper is dangerous. The evidence is based on correlation, not causation, but the paper implies something vastly different from that. We don't know how big a role piracy played, because we do not have the ability to see the world as it could have been, and we cannot adequately measure things like "desire to produce content" in the populace at large. Thus the evidence is interesting, but far from conclusive.

I won't expand the scope of this discussion to the general topic of piracy, but I will say that this paper isn't going to convince me that piracy is a good thing, nor that this is as simple an issue as the writers imply.

(that being said, anyone notice the huge patch of piracy articles recently? Can we call Ars pirate fanbois now? If the answer is no...can we do it as long as we promise to do it sarcastically?)

Sorry, but i just don't agree that file sharing and weakened copyright by this is a good thing. Lots of artists are having a hard time getting things released... lots of people who work with artists, songwriters and more can't make their rent/mortgages.

this is bs. sorry but justifying stealing is wrong. people like to dress it up as anti-RIAA and big conglomerates. but now the artists are more empowered than ever, but people still steal.

sorry, but if you care about any artists, buy your music via legal means.

You've given me no reason to read the papers you've linked, and your posting style makes me wonder if I should be reporting this post as spam rather than requesting that you give us some explanation and/or discussion. How about, instead of spamming us with an advertisement for your favorite publications, presenting us with something of substance, say an argument including a quotation or two and a link to the articles for those who want to read more?

My thoughts exactly!

The value of much music produced these days is incredibly low. My thinking is "if an album has multiple songs I like [for me 4] then I will buy the album and support the artist. If there's only 1 or 2, time to buy the singles digitally." Many friends of mine express the same thought, and digital single sales clearly show many others think the same. There's several reasons for this declined album value, which is an entirely different discussion.

When the value of music released is reduced to 10% of it's charged price ($2 for a couple singles instead of $20 for the album), pirating instead of buying seems far less heinous and much more easy to justify. I don't support ripping off artists and I'm not justifying pirating, as it's only fair for artists to be compensated for their work. But making music with increased value is a much bigger part of the solution than enforcing ever-stronger and increasingly ridiculous copyright. And this copyright insanity also makes many people feel more like pirating is justified; laws that "go too far" are more likely to be ignored.

Sorry, but i just don't agree that file sharing and weakened copyright by this is a good thing. Lots of artists are having a hard time getting things released... lots of people who work with artists, songwriters and more can't make their rent/mortgages.

this is bs. sorry but justifying stealing is wrong. people like to dress it up as anti-RIAA and big conglomerates. but now the artists are more empowered than ever, but people still steal.

sorry, but if you care about any artists, buy your music via legal means.

1) Troll, go back to your bridge.2) Anecdotal inflammatory stuff like this is all and well, but the point of the article (debatable if you even read it) is that you have a group offering empirical evidence that there have been increases in the industries regardless of the infringement that has sprouted up in recent years. You offer no empirical evidence. You offer vitriol-fueled personal opinions. So does the record labels, for that matter. I'm sorry, but you can't fight actual research and evidence with "NUH UH! It's not like that!" and expect people to actually treat you like an adult and consider your point of view as anything even remotely intelligent.

I buy my music legally. But I also don't buy big-label music. I have an indie artist I've followed religiously for almost 10 years. I'll gladly play his music for anyone and everyone. But the instant they ask if they can rip the CD or make a copy, I tell them (politely) hell no and that I want to support this artist in his living. Every single person I've said that to has gladly and enthusiastically agreed to pay the man for his music, because he's that good. Maybe I'm just lucky in that I only know good people that care about entertainment. But I can say that people will pay if it's good, and they will support the artist. Big labels, however, don't really do much to win people over, nor do they actually write the songs, act in the movies, or paint the pictures that people want to buy. So they're obsolete.

I won't expand the scope of this discussion to the general topic of piracy, but I will say that this paper isn't going to convince me that piracy is a good thing, nor that this is as simple an issue as the writers imply.

Breaking laws is never a good thing, except to the extent that it's an indication that the laws themselves are bad, unjust, or impractical. IMO, we should look at the results of this paper as telling us that the framing of the discussion provided by large copyright holders (piracy is bad, piracy is killing us, piracy must be stopped, etc.) is extremely problematic. Casting this as a moral issue (amoral thieves and law-breakers versus hard-working rightsholders), or as an issue of law and justice (if you disagree, don't break the law, change it) ignores crucial features of the situation. You pointed out, quite correctly that this is a complicated issue, but the fact is that those arguing for more rights for rightsholders are over-simplifying at least as much, and at least as disingenuously, as anyone else.

'Piracy' of copyrighted works is not a good thing, but it exists, and we need to do something about it (that much is clear). As this article asks, why not simply make these problematic actions legal? Joe Gamer got to the heart of the true answer to that question.

Sorry, but i just don't agree that file sharing and weakened copyright by this is a good thing. Lots of artists are having a hard time getting things released... lots of people who work with artists, songwriters and more can't make their rent/mortgages.

Lots of people who aren't artists and songwriters can't make their rent/mortgages either. Aside from appealing to emotion, what's your point?

DrunkBender wrote:

this is bs. sorry but justifying stealing is wrong. people like to dress it up as anti-RIAA and big conglomerates. but now the artists are more empowered than ever, but people still steal.

I'm assuming that you never pick up coins in the street, as that's no less theft than infringing copyright (in the sense that any argument which makes copyright infringement a sort of theft will equally make picking up that coin a sort of theft).

Note that you're engaging in precisely the sort of oversimplification that Operative Alex correctly identified as being an obstacle to doing anything productive WRT copyrights. Thanks for contributing to the problem.

I am against illegally sharing copyrighted work. I think artists should be paid, which will ultimately decide if they have a continuing career and what level of livelihood they will have. As I have said before, if that was your work, you would feel differently about file sharing.

That said, I am largely against the pricing model set by the media industry as a whole. It does not make sense at all. Two movies, grossing $300MM and $20MM respectively at the box office, both sell for $20 for the DVD. Hmm and the industry is surprised that people illiegally download the $20MM grossing movie.

Case in point, The Hurt Locker, which has been in the news. I paid $5 via PPV to "rent" it and that is what I think is was worth. It was a good watch, but not a great movie. I would consider paying another $5 for the DVD if they could meet that price. I don't need extra features and a big plastic case. Give me a cardboard sleeve. Avatar, I would probably pay like $8 for a DVD copy. That may sound like I am cheap, but how many times in my lifetime will I watch these. Here and there, but a handful at most if I am really that bored every couple of years. The last time I bought DVDs was when there was some 2 movies on one disc for like $5. I bout like 8 of those and spent $40. The value was there for me.

In terms of music, I only buy from Amazon the DRM free tracks that I like. I buy a good deal of music from them and I have not bought a CD in the store in like 10 years. I did buy a good deal of DRM music, but when one stores went out of business, I was screwed after my hard drive crashed. I thought I backed up the licenses, but I may have done something wrong. With the Amazon format, my last Hard Drive crash did not cost me anything since I backed up the content. In the end, I think $1 a song is a good price and I do buy a lot more since Amazon came out with DRM free than I did for years before. I have been buying a lot of old stuff too back when I had the cassettes.

The industry needs to dramatically re-vamp the pricing model. It is easy to blame file sharing as the problem, but in the end it is pricing and quality of content that is the problem. There is clearly demand, but the industry needs to try new pricing tiers to find the best fit for the most people. There are people who will pay more for the full feature disc and packaging. Make some for them. Then there are others who just want the movie at a fair price. Make a version for this group too. File sharing probably won't go away, but it could be limited via sales if the price is right.

I absolutely love the "starving artists" argument. It's like "think of the children".

Name me one artist that has been reduced to poverty because of filesharing. It doesn't have to be a rich million-dollar, spoon-fed artist. Just any artist who was making a good living off his/her work, and now can't.

A lot of the misery the industry is feeling is its own fault. They created this problem due to their desire to maximise profits and as time has passed its biting them in the ass. Good.

The way the industry created this problem is by the way they marketed and monetized albums. They would sell the albums, but they also created singles. The singles were sent out to the stations and would be used to hype the bands. They also sold the individual singles in shops so there was more exposure and more opportunities for profit. They part and parceled the albums out to make more money. By setting the precedent of singles they derailed their own album sales.

Also as an older music fan I remember when albums were to be listened to as a compleat (english style for class;) work. The entire album was the story telling method. It started with track one and went thru the whole recording to create a mood or make a point. A perfect example of this is Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or "Tommy" by The Who. Nowadays albums are nothing more than a mishmash of singles. There is no incentive to listen to the whole album which leads to cherry picking when it comes to music consumption.

I'm gonna throw out the homogenization of music is part of the problem also. There are not as many music types being strongly supported as it was in the past. Now the industry has fallen behind a few primary genus and is in the process of riding them into the ground.

I fear that this paper will quickly be used as "evidence" in any discussion of piracy on Ars from here on out, and in that respect, this kind of paper is dangerous. The evidence is based on correlation, not causation, but the paper implies something vastly different from that. We don't know how big a role piracy played, because we do not have the ability to see the world as it could have been, and we cannot adequately measure things like "desire to produce content" in the populace at large. Thus the evidence is interesting, but far from conclusive.

Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it doesn't preempt it either.

And if it's not, the entire paper asks by implication, why don't politicians even consider weakening US copyright law?

Simple. Because no one is paying them to weaken it. They have people paying them to strengthen it. Their job isn't about doing what's right, or about doing what the people want. It's just like our job, it's about doing what makes you the most money. And even if this statement doesn't match what they are saying, I think an argument could be made that it matches what they are doing.

It's funny, and totally counterintuitive, but I've spent about $100-150 on music so far this year (counting, of course, my level 2 subscription to thefump.com)--all on artists who give away their songs.

I have so far this year bought the music of Rob Balder and Jonathan Coulton (and of course, the Funny Music Project).

I also spent $10 on the Humble Indie Bundle, when I could have spent a penny--or pirated it.

Last year, I bought In Rainbows for 2 quid, when again, I could have spent a penny.

Yes, I'm smug about my content-buying habits. Sorry.

If you are an artist, file sharing is free advertising, free distribution, and good public relations.

I'm working on my first cuts of music now. Guess how you'll be able to get them?

Sorry, but i just don't agree that file sharing and weakened copyright by this is a good thing. Lots of artists are having a hard time getting things released... lots of people who work with artists, songwriters and more can't make their rent/mortgages.

Others have responded nicely to this but more to the point-just because someone wants to be an artist/songwriter/and more doesn't mean that they will be successful. Some artists/songwriters/and more just suck and will never produce any content of any value and thusly will never be able to pay their rents/mortgages from their creative endeavors.

DrunkBender wrote:

this is bs. sorry but justifying stealing is wrong. people like to dress it up as anti-RIAA and big conglomerates. but now the artists are more empowered than ever, but people still steal.

Before I go into this, I will state that I think that there are plenty of reasons to weaken copyrights, and I agree wholeheartedly that copyright is about protecting the ability for people to access and use the content made. "Art" has no benefit to society in a vacuum, it exists to entertain, to enlighten, to be consumed, and copyright SHOULD be about ensuring that our societies as a whole have access to it.

The problem is a lot more complex than the study would lead people to believe. Stating that "more music is being made" is not compelling proof that infringement is doing the right thing. Quantity != quality, and I personally think that over-saturation is part of the problem in the marketplace. Endless sequels, B movies and straight-to-DVD flicks all would be counted in the argument that more content is being produced. At the same time however, if studios are simply shotgunning ideas rather than focusing on making good content, is that the same thing as improving the offerings for society?

Secondly, there are plenty of gaping holes in the logic. One is brought up directly in the article-- the impossibility of knowing how things would have turned out otherwise leaves a pretty big gap in the logic. It's possible that without infringement, we would have just as much content (or more), but at a higher quality. Also there is the fact that there are a number of factors that play into how much content gets produced: the cost to produce content, the strategy of the companies affecting the decisions of independent labels, and the increased amount of money being invested into movies are all factors. One could also argue that as Hollywood budgets and paychecks have increased (which also occurred over the same time period), the incentive to get into business in the recording/movie/television industry has also grown, leading to a larger pool of people eager to get into the business, driving the amount of content produced.

That's the trouble with studies like this: they take an intricate problem that likely has multiple things affecting the outcome, and seeks to derive a conclusion while focusing entirely on the part of the argument that best suits their goals. This isn't scientific, and is about as relevant to the discussion as the studies which the content producers used to show the damages caused by pirates. It may mention that there are other factors, but the paper is written to convince you that despite those dozen of other factors/possibilities, theirs is the right conclusion.

I fear that this paper will quickly be used as "evidence" in any discussion of piracy on Ars from here on out, and in that respect, this kind of paper is dangerous. The evidence is based on correlation, not causation, but the paper implies something vastly different from that. We don't know how big a role piracy played, because we do not have the ability to see the world as it could have been, and we cannot adequately measure things like "desire to produce content" in the populace at large. Thus the evidence is interesting, but far from conclusive.

I won't expand the scope of this discussion to the general topic of piracy, but I will say that this paper isn't going to convince me that piracy is a good thing, nor that this is as simple an issue as the writers imply.

(that being said, anyone notice the huge patch of piracy articles recently? Can we call Ars pirate fanbois now? If the answer is no...can we do it as long as we promise to do it sarcastically?)

I'm glad someone pointed out the correlation vs causation problem clearly shown by this paper. Like you, I very much doubt the underlying conclusion about piracy somehow helping these industries or leading to more/better content being available. Though that may actually be the case, the evidence in this paper does little to support that conclusion. Rather, I think the argument can be made that the claims about the music and movie industries dying coming from the big record labels, film companies, and their proxies are completely false at worst and grossly exaggerated at best. I won't make the claim that piracy has had absolutely zero negative effects on these industries. However, I will say the whatever small amount of harm which has been done does not justify the changes to law and copyright infringement prevention practices being lobbied for by these industry groups.

RE Correlation vs. Causation: this paper is pretty good in making the point that there doesn't seem to be a real harm to the creative industries brought about by easier piracy, rather than the supposed message that piracy has been good. It's time for the RIAA et al. to show us the harm to art, not the traditional label distribution business model, that piracy has supposedly caused.

(This number appears to involve only major labels, however, and cheap digital tools mean that much of the music production today is done without a major label.)

This, I think, is the key point the big labels are missing. Many artists these days don't need the labels - they have ways to promote and share their art themselves.

The argument that money is an incentive for artists to create art is quite silly in my mind. One only has to browse sites such Flickr, DeviantArt etc. to see this.

Yes, but is it wrong to expect that an artist can make his living creating art? Or do we expect the "starving artist" to create for us without receiving anything in return but the satisfaction of a job well done?

The starving artist isn't the one being defended by the lawsuits of the RIAA and MPAA. If any artists at all are being helped by their actions, it's celebrity artists.

The true starving artists know that it's not the means by which you get their media that determine their income, it's the after effects of experiencing such media: download a song of an artist you've never heard, like it, buy a ticket to their show.

You must understand that successful musicians make the majority of their money from ticket sales first, non-music merchandise 2nd and album sales last. Do a little research and you'll fond that even major musical acts make a few pennies on the dollar for album sales and millions on ticket sales.

While ticket sales affect the gross made from movies, it's very rare that starving artists are involved in this equation. Indie film makers are the movie industry's starving artist and they're often smart enough to either self-publish or publish thru an existing indie film publisher who won't screw them.

Besides, when has "making a living" ever meant "aquiring wealth in an amount only attained by 10% of Americans" [aka: such that you can afford a mansion in Beverly Hills]?